It’s been two decades since Dove launched its campaign for real beauty, yet in some parts of the marketing industry featuring a ‘real woman’ in an ad campaign is still a creative idea in itself, rather than a statement of fact.

Regardless of gender, stereotypes in marketing abound. A state of play which leaves many consumers neither represented nor respected by brands. The rise of a narrative which warns brands of the perils of being ‘cancelled’ is only adding to the malaise.

Embracing the lived experience of real people in advertising can provide brands with a competitive and creative advantage. While brands must walk a tightrope between aspiration and alienation, embracing the messy reality of consumers' conflicting and at times confusing lives can help drive both empathy and effectiveness.

With this in mind we asked industry leaders if brands are still treating real people as a marketing gimmick and if they should be braver in embracing the messy reality of consumers' lives.

Real people, relatable storytelling, genuine representation – at face value, these are all part of engaging campaigns, and an important move towards inclusivity. But - in reality, executions are still too often sanitised and superficial.

The beauty industry in particular is ripe for a reckoning in this regard. Even though Dove’s OG ‘Real Beauty’ campaign is now 20 years old, and it feels like on some level we’ve seen a move towards campaigns that reflect the diverse spectrum of 'real beauty’ - it still all feels a bit one-note. Representation reads as checkbox, and narratives are often cynically curated in service of marketing objectives.

By contrast, TikTok has revolutionised the game: providing a space for real people to show and tell their unique beauty experiences, challenges and emotions. It doesn’t get more messy (quite literally) than  videos of people pulling off their pimple patches, but they can also provide candid insight into an acne sufferer’s vulnerabilities – not to mention undeniably tangible proof of product efficacy.

Brands should take note. The reality of human experience isn’t one dimensional, and by being brave enough to embrace the raw and unfiltered aspects, rather than cherry-picking ‘relatable moments’, brands can cut through the noise, creating campaigns with the potential to resonate on a deeper level.

We’ve all done it. Blown yet another positive meeting by dropping the ‘C-Bomb’. Call it occupational Tourette’s. 

The words in question. ‘Consumer’ and ‘Customer’.

These C words have crept into marketing conversations unchecked in recent times. But as an industry, we seemingly swear by these colourful words without challenging their true validity. 

The fact that 40% of Cannes Lion winners this year didn’t resonate with real people says everything we need to know about most brands disconnect with ‘consumers’.  

This has consequences. A lack of understanding of the end user as a human being, but merely as a consumer of an existing product.

It calls for a new perspective on research. Swapping vague consumer insights for real truths that care for the people in question (hopes, emotions, desires etc). Rather than simply looking at consumption in isolation. 

Truth is brands need people more than people need brands. Talking with them, not at them. Adding value to their lives, not noise, ensures we get people who swear by brands again.

Back in the early 2000’s when celebrities were ubiquitous in PR campaigns, many argued that Dove’s Real Beauty campaign broke the mould.

But real people had been essential to effective campaigns way before that.  I worked with the British Army Recruiting Group for years and real soldiers and officers were quite literally the only people qualified to talk about life in the Army.  Self-selection led to exponential growth in recruiting numbers.

When we talk about making clients relevant now, our start point is the real people they’re designed to serve.  The human-first approach is far from a gimmick, it’s the truest way to attract likeminded people in an authentic way and to keep them coming back.  Working with client Reddit we see this every day.  Celebrity AMAs (Ask Me Anything) get traction, but it’s the stories of real people in all their weird, wonderful glory that give us a sense of community.

During my career I’ve learnt that whilst aspiration is a useful tactic, we also need to be reassured that we - with all our imperfections - are not alone. That sense breeds belonging and loyalty. Embracing the nuances of diverse audiences is essential to effective and inclusive communication.  And in the battle for hearts and minds (and wallets) it’s fundamental to success.

As marketeers, we must acknowledge that we are operating in a world of storytelling and are therefore always going to be one step removed from authentically representing the reality of people’s lives. Marketing tends to swing one of two ways: it’s either glossy and unrealistic, or a hyperbolic world of anarchy and chaos. Ultimately, however, it’s often an exaggerated version of reality. Can, or should, it be anything more than that? I’m not so sure. The reality of consumer’s lives are vast, varied, nuanced, and complicated. Not to say that it can’t be embraced, but a lot of time and effort needs to be put into understanding it, we can’t assume or generalise. What we can do, however, is apply more realism to the role our brand or products play - we’re very guilty of over-stating their impact on people’s lives. Will a bowl of cereal truly be the glue that holds a family relationship together over time? Probably not. We need to be careful of minimising people’s real lives and real problems into situations that can miraculously be resolved with the help of our brand or its products.

Brands should absolutely be braver and more honest with themselves - very few go far enough to understand their audiences properly. Sure, plenty of marketers talk about real people and culture, but then still use outdated models to segment people or only communicate with them through false environments such as paid focus groups or surveys.

If you then use that information to create your work, it's going to be misplaced or worse, generic from the start.

Instead, we believe that attention today lies in social. We can see the incredible, almost infinite depth of culture there, real conversations and interests, which is why rather than look at broad segmentation we think about ‘cohorts’ of people with very specific yet diverse characteristics and interests, just like we all have in real life. These cohorts become the bullseye for creativity, each one acting as a guide for the creative we make.

Groups of cohorts are created and tailored for each client, but can change and evolve based on what we’re seeing happening in culture but also around business priorities such as product launches. By putting the consumer at the centre of the creative brief, it allows us to make work those people are more likely to care about and therefore likely to be consumed.

It is how we drive relevance for clients at scale and we fundamentally believe it is the only way to create effective audiences and truly resonate in modern marketing.

I can't help but chuckle at the notion of "REAL PEOPLE" in advertising. The term alone is a marketing ploy, and our industry swings wildly between two extremes when it comes to representation. We either under-represent our Britishness with a bland, pale, straight narrative, or we go overboard with back-to-back adverts crammed full of every conceivable diversity trope.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the latter. If you want to normalise something, you need to shout it from the rooftops.

But there's a trickier point here, one that many brands shy away from. It’s about embracing the messy, chaotic, and frankly sticky truths of life. Full-length films nail this. You can almost smell the set because it’s so damn realistic. Yet when we shrink our lens down to a 30-second commercial, reality is tossed out the window. Everything becomes over-styled, over-propped, and unnaturally clean.

Therefore, it is vital that we embrace messy truth and advise our brand partners to do the same —it's what makes life, and marketing, truly compelling. Remember when red blood replaced that ludicrous blue liquid in ads? Dove ditched retouching (and more recently AI) for real beauty, and the Paralympics never fail to present reality as it is. These examples resonate because they’re authentic, and that’s what people crave. 

Marketing to ‘real people’ isn’t another gimmick or trend. It’s getting back to what brands are supposed to do – understand and serve their customers. This ‘back to basics’ approach is a necessary reaction to years of brands ignoring real people altogether in favour of chasing awards (judged by fellow marketers of course) or establishing social purpose programmes that make young, urban liberals feel better about doing the dirty work of selling.

Getting under the skin of real people is hard work, messy and often contradictory. It means committing to spending lots of time with people in the real world, not delegating that understanding to external researchers or Google. In recent months our planners have been on toddler picnics, shopping trips and spent days shadowing car salespeople on test drives. This genuine, first-hand experience matters. It’s why any brand trying to signal it gets real people, without doing the necessary work, is going to get found out.

At The Ninety-Niners, we designed a Shopper Empathy programme for Asahi Europe in which hundreds of young marketers take on a consumer persona and go shopping in that character. The experience of acting like a consumer is revelatory. The biggest ‘aha’ for most, facing up to the financial and logistical compromises of real life, is how insignificant their brand is in real people’s lives. Suddenly they realise that communicating a ‘point of difference’ it is much less important than being culturally relevant and interesting.

It’s what we have done for Dole, diving headlong into culture wars by suggesting adding grilled pineapple to a Full English Breakfast and provoking thousands of negative comments (as well as a few positive ones). The authenticity of polarised opinion meant the campaign gained a huge amount of earned media and even won the IAA Creative Bravery award a few weeks ago. And real people thought differently about pineapple for a few moments.

Reality in advertising is a funny thing. As people, we all want to feel seen and understood. And we want to relate to what we see in entertainment, whether that’s advertising, TV programming, or any type of content. So we tend to love brands that are really insightful about our lives.

What we don’t want, though, is just to watch our lives reflected right back at us. It’s not that interesting, we don’t learn anything new, and it’s not really much fun. No one wants to watch a documentary of themselves on repeat, do they?

For brands, that means treading a fine line. Authenticity is important – and there are plenty of brands now embracing realness, showing lives that aren’t made up advertising tropes or fake-perfect scenarios.

But the trick to being entertaining also means maintaining the right amount of fun, funny or even drama.

Modern Families is a brilliant example of being real and representative, but also very funny and entertaining. Gogglebox is cast so brilliantly – real people, but never boring or standard. Outnumbered was so successful because it was a mix of acting and relatable characters, but was often unscripted in its best moments. And all of these embrace the messy reality of consumers’ lives, but do it in a way that makes them endlessly watchable.

I should think we could all agree that consumer’s lives are messy - we don’t have to look too far from the reflection in bathroom cabinet to acknowledge this fact. Some of this mess we make for ourselves, for sure, but a good helping of mess is served to us, by the glitchy world in which we live. A world which gives with one hand and takes with the other, serving you half-truths. myths and contradictions; or as we call them, glitches.

But for the most part, people are striving for neater, better lives, and they reach out with two hands to grab hold of the glimmers of hope and light that break through all that glitchiness.

So what does this mean for brands, who want to both resonate with consumers' lives, but at the same time manifest those glimmers in a tangible way?

Well firstly there is absolutely value in embracing and understanding the realities of consumers lives, as it is only through these insights that you can truly unpick and respond to the messiness in which consumers live. But when it comes to marketing, perhaps there is still some merit in keeping ‘real people’ as ‘otherly’, a gimmicky distorted reflection of consumers, rather than a high resolution selfie; because on the whole consumers are still drawn towards the glimmers in life, a distraction from our messy realities, and seeing ‘real people’ rather than real people is just that bit more engaging.

We’ve entered ‘brat’ summer, with Gen Z embracing a dirty, messy aesthetic, as championed by Charli XCX with her latest album Brat. This follows the ongoing shift in people’s social media behaviour towards a more low-fi approach, evidenced by photo dumps, shitposting and finstas. The vibe is carefree, imperfect and - crucially - authentic.  Yet, in general, advertising’s portrayal of modern life is still highly curated. Too many brands shy away from showing the messy reality. They also fail to reflect society, with women, ethnic minority groups and disabled people still under-represented.

Why is advertising so afraid of real people?

This conversation is even more important to have with the evolution of AI. We need more brands to take a stand against using AI in their campaigns, as Dove has done with the latest ad in its Real Beauty campaign. Consumers are craving IRL experiences and content that feels more authentic, and this is why TikTok - the home of real – has become such a phenomenon. As AI takes over, authentic portrayals of life will be even rarer in advertising. Brands now have the ability to create any reality they want. But it makes far more commercial sense to show life as we know it. That’s the only way to truly connect with audiences and build communities.